So, you’ve found yourself a vintage quilt in the attic, restored it and want to hang it in your bedroom. Or you’ve come across a great cheap find in an antique store, and now you want to make it hang above your headpiece.
You’re convinced that it will look great, that it will fit just perfect, so you take an afternoon to hang it up just where you want it.
And it looks horrid. It just puts the entire bedroom out of whack, and you can’t even tell what the problem is.
Should you just give up?
No! Of course not! A good vintage quite can fit well in any bedroom as long as you know how to decorate to make it fit.
That’s exactly what I’ll be talking about today – I’ll tell you exactly how to decorate a bedroom around a vintage quilt without leaving any details out!
Let’s get straight to it!
Where to Start?
While vintage things are in, a lot of people don’t exactly want their homes to look old. You definitely don’t want it to look like your grandma’s apartment, that’s for sure.
This is a common misconception when it comes to decorating around vintage items – that you have to make your entire room, or house, look old to make them fit. The truth is that you don’t have to do that at all.
No, what you need to start with are the colors and patterns used on the quilt.
You want to make sure that the color of most of the items in the room matches the quilt – but to do that, you don’t want to match the primary color of the quilt, no. That’s an easy mistake to make, and it will just make the whole room look drab.
What you should do is this – try to find items that are in two colors, with the primary color of the item being the same as the secondary color of the quilt and vice-versa.
For example, if you have a quilt that’s mostly navy blue and has ivory as a secondary color, you might want to get bed sheets that are ivory with navy blue pillows to go on top. You get the general idea.
Now, if you’ve got a quilt that’s just full of all sorts of different colors with no clear primary or secondary color – something like those old bohemian quilts and blankets – you shouldn’t try and match all of them. That would just create visual chaos.
In that case, try and match up just one color used on the quilt and keep most of the room completely in that color. This will emphasize the quilt more and keep it from turning the room into a visual mess.
You should also try and match the geometric patterns on the quilt – if it’s mostly squares, try to make everything more square-shaped. If it has a lot of triangles, go with that.
Placing the Quilt
Of course, just making the rest of the room match the quilt to some degree is not enough to make it fit in properly – you also need to consider how you want to present the quilt itself.
There are many different ways to place a quilt in a room and make it look good.
The most obvious thing to do is to place it on the bed during the day, but if it’s an antique or a precious item you might not want to do that – it’s more than understandable.
However, if you do choose to go this route, the most important thing to do is to make sure that your bedding below it is in a fairly neutral color, like white, and that your pillows match the quilt as much as possible.
The rest of the space near the bed should also be in a neutral color, without too much clutter around it.
If you want to make the quilt a centerpiece of the room though, you can hang it on your wall, possibly above your bed. In this case, you would want your entire bedding to be in one color most of the time. The secondary color of the quilt is the best choice.
In this case, you might even want to frame the quilt or place it in a shadow box to make it stand out more.
On the more subtle side though, you could just drape the quilt over another piece of furniture in the room, like a chair or a closet and let it sit there as a quiet mood-enhancer.
Just make sure to de-emphasize the quilt in this case. Place a lot of similar-looking items around it that use its primary color and make it blend into the background. It might be just the thing you need to make it fit in properly.
The Final Word on Vintage Quilts
There you go – if you ever find yourself with a vintage quilt on your hands and you want to place it in the bedroom, you now know how to do it and make it fit. This advice should also prove useful if you want to place it in any other room as well.
In case I left something out, or you just want to ask more about the subtle art of room decoration – just pop down into the comments and ask. If I don’t get to your question in time (and I hope I will) someone else will surely have the answer you need.
I hope you’ll have a good time decorating and I’ll see you soon!
